BBC - Comedy - The League Of Gentlemen The League Of Gentlemen The League Of Gentlemen We all need to be jealous of something. The League of Gentlemen must be near the top of the tree of ideas other comedians wish they'd had first. But Mark Gatiss, Steve Pemberton, Reece Shearsmith and Jeremy Dyson thought of it -so to them, the glory. The story of a simple Northern village where everyone keeps themselves to themselves and people like to keep things 'local', The League of Gentlemen is one of the most powerful comic formats ever created. Along with The Fast Show, it made the sketch format 'cool' after the genre spending years in the wilderness. Without The League, there would have been - almost without a doubt - no Little Britain. At times genuinely moving, at others so profoundly disturbing and shocking that it transcends traditional comedy, most of the time TLOG is just extremely funny, biting and brilliantly, dramatically written - the classiest sketch-based format written in recent broadcasting history. Starting as a revue format at Edinburgh and then vaulting onto radio, The League of Gentlemen is a sketch show, although it is also a sitcom - particularly in its television guise.

In the village of Royston Vasey, various characters mostly played by Gatiss, Pemberton and Shearsmith inhabit a dark world of secrets and offhand depravity. The local butcher, Hilary Briss, serves a particular kind of 'special stuff' the nature of which is never discovered. German scoutleader Herr Lipp has questionable relations with his charges. Theatre troupe Legz Akimbo are led by the thoroughly inadequate Olly, whilst sadistic restart officer Pauline rules her charges with a mixture of cruelty and contempt. The Dentons worship toads and condemn self-abuse. Cab driver Barbara is never seen but is always saving up for her/his/its 'operation'. Most appalling and most famous, however, are characters such as Papa Lazarou, the owner of a traveling circus whose catchphrase 'Hello Dave?' looks innocent on paper but which sounds utterly disgusting, and Tubbs and Edward, who run the 'Local Shop for Local People', fiercely hate outsiders, and at least in the TV version of the show, both show pronounced inbred, piglike noses.

Most formats that travel from radio to television, especially dark, imaginative formats such as The League, suffer because the mind tends to be able to 'do' things with the characters which reality can't match. But the imaginations of the League, as well as Producer Gemma Rogers and Director Steve Bendelack, gave visual life to the League's monsters in far more horrifying, though comic, form than virtually anyone could have pictured on radio. On radio, too, the series was more obviously 'sketches' - mainly owing to being performed live. Most of the TV series was made, however, on location and then screened for the audience. The result is that although there's a laughter track, it's hardly noticeable, and doesn't interfere with the scenes - allowing The League to become its own world much more effectively. Three series of The League were produced, with the BBC not closing the door on a fourth. The first series saw the inhabitants reacting badly to a road being built through the town; the second saw plenty of deaths owing to a rash of nosebleeds. The first two series were both massively popular and cultish at the same time, winning a BAFTA, a Royal Television Society Award and a Golden Rose at Montreux.

The third series, however, took a different turn, with the characters all involved in a skein of stories which all interlinked into a larger narrative. The creators were getting frustrated with their characters and situations, and imprisoned within them - and this was made even plainer in the film version of the series, The League of Gentlemen's Apocalypse, in which Royston Vasey is destroyed after a series of adventures between our world and that of the series. Debates about the slightly less popular third series and the film remain rife - with diehard fans of the 'proper' League wishing that the creators had simply stuck to their original idea. This, however, misses the point - which is that it was that need to create truly original characters that drove the League in the first place, and you can't stuff that genie back in the bottle. Whether they do another series or something completely new, it will be startling, and different - not just the old stuff redone.

The League of Gentlemen (TV Series 1999-2002) — The Movie Database (TMDb) Find out where to watch on Overview The League of Gentlemen is a quartet of British dark comedy writers/performers, formed in 1995 by Jeremy Dyson, Mark Gatiss, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith. The television programme for which they are best known, although officially labelled a sitcom, was initially more sketch-based, linked together by their common setting: the fictional village of Royston Vasey, based on the town of Alston, Cumbria and set somewhere in the north of England. The show contains elements of horror. The first series aired on BBC Two in 1999, and follows the lives of dozens of the town's bizarre inhabitants, played by Gatiss, Pemberton and Shearsmith in a number of different guises and make-up. The television series was filmed mainly in Hadfield, but also features Glossop, Gamesley, Marsden, Mottram, Hope Valley, and Todmorden. The series ended in 2002 although a movie version of the show was released in 2005.

Rumours have circulated since 2007 that the show would return for a full length series or special but nothing has ever been confirmed or denied. However, Shearsmith and Pemberton did reunite in 2009 to create a similarly dark BBC sitcom, Psychoville, which featured an episode guest-starring Gatiss. The three reunited again in 2012 to film a series of sketches for the fourth series of CBBC show Horrible Histories. Featured Crew Horrible Histories: CBBC meets Royston Vasey | The Independent Horrible Histories: CBBC meets Royston Vasey Thursday 5 April 2012 23:00 BST Click to follow The Independent Culture Steve Pemberton, Mark Gatiss and Reece Shearsmith star in 'Horrible Histories' on CBBC BBC At their most grotesque, they possessed imagination dark enough to spew forth the village of Royston Vasey – a place populated by pen-obsessed sadists, an incestuous "local" couple and a magical man who swanned around in black-face, abducting innocent women from their homes.

Now, after 10 years, the League of Gentlemen are back ... on a children's TV show. In a way, there's no better place for them than CBBC's Horrible Histories. Loved by children and adored by adults, its focus on poo, gore and stupid deaths (all told through fantastically clever and hilarious sketches) is precisely the sort of thing Steve Pemberton, Reece Shearsmith and Mark Gatiss might write if they lowered the age of their target audience. "We're all huge fans of the show," explains Gatiss. "It's brilliantly written and genuinely, dare I say, Reithian in its aims to inform, educate, entertain. It also doesn't talk down to kids in any way. They're just straightforwardly funny ideas and people of all ages respond to that." Their sketches, sprinkled throughout series four, see them take the form of a hyperactive panel of film executives to whom historical figures (such as an irate Dick Whittington) pitch their biopics – a spoof of those Orange cinema adverts. "We didn't try to influence or change the sketches at all," says Gatiss.

"We just had a laugh – after 12 years together, there's a kind of shorthand that developed. We ended up doing some quite outrageous things, just for fun. Or I did. Maybe I'll never work again. They treated us rather like elder statesman." Has being back together given them a taste for writing as a trio again? "We'd love to do something together but we're all so busy on separate projects," says Gatiss. "Maybe 'A Return to Royston Vasey' in 2019, 20 years on, to see where the characters have got to?" 'Horrible Histories' starts on CCBC on Monday at 5pm More about: The League of Gentlemen (1999) for Rent on DVD - DVD Netflix The League of Gentlemen 1999 NR Rated NR 3 seasons Get a whopping dose of dark humor down in the hamlet of Royston Vasey in this outrageously macabre sketch comedy/sitcom hybrid, which showcases a three-man comedy troupe portraying dozens of peculiar characters who call the village home. Rent DVDs for only $4.99 a month.

3 Summary of Season 1 (1999) - 1 disc Enter the weird and wonderfully twisted world of Royston Vasey -- an isolated and rather odd town somewhere in northern England. Its singular inhabitants lead dark lives, from the incompetent veterinarian to the transsexual taxi driver. English: Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo Other features Color; interactive menus; scene access; audio commentary; deleted scenes and outtakes; production notes; interactive tour; still gallery. Summary of Season 2 (2000) - 1 disc The residents of Royston Vasey are still going about their bizarre business in the second series of the dark comedy. The mayor has a town-wide nose-bleeding epidemic on his hands, and Royston Vasey is playing host to some seriously odd visitors. The League of Gentlemen (TV Series 1999–2002) - IMDb IMDb There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This! Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends.

Error 19 episodes An interweaving narrative chronicling the antics of such diverse characters as: a transsexual taxi driver, a family obsessed with hygiene and toads, a fiery reverend, a carnival owner who kidnaps women into marriage, and a xenophobic couple who run a local shop for local people. Stars: Now unemployed Pauline has to face the scorn of her successor Cathy Carter- Smith. Meanwhile Papa Lazarus brings his Pandemonium Circus to Royston Vasey. He has a disconcerting habit of hypnotising ... 8.7 Alone in the chapel of hope on Christmas Eve Reverend Bernice hates Christmas,since her mother was carried off by Papa Lazarou disguised as Santa Claus when she was a child. She has three visitors. ... 8.5 As Royston Vasey is put under martial law and Legz Akimbo are hired to put on a play as a diversion the police arrest Eunice as the cause of the outbreak though Hilary escapes. Chinnery has yet ...

8.4 a list of 21 titles created 07 Jan 2011 a list of 37 titles created 26 Oct 2011 a list of 47 titles created 16 Oct 2012 a list of 31 titles created 26 Mar 2014 a list of 28 titles created 4 months ago Title: The League of Gentlemen (1999–2002) 8.4/10 Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. 7 wins & 6 nominations. See more awards » Photos A group of seemingly unrelated strangers all receive a mysterious note stating "I know what you did," which sends their lives into a downward spiral. Stars: Reece Shearsmith, Steve Pemberton, Daniel Kaluuya The notorious fictional town of Royston Vasey is under threat and its inhabitants are forced to leave. Director: Steve Bendelack Inside No.

9 (TV Series 2014) Comedy | Horror | Mystery The show invites viewers into some very different No.9s, where the ordinary and mundane rub shoulders with the extraordinary and macabre. Stars: Steve Pemberton, Reece Shearsmith, Rosie Cavaliero UK comedy sketch show depicting most forms of stereotypical mid-90's British society. Stars: Paul Whitehouse, Charlie Higson, Arabella Weir Controversal spoof of current-affairs TV and the role of celebrity in the UK. Stars: Christopher Morris, Mark Heap, Kevin Eldon Alan Partridge a failed television presenter whose previous exploits had featured in the chat-show parody Knowing Me, Knowing You with Alan Partridge, and who is now presenting a programed on local radio in Norwich. Stars: Steve Coogan, Phil Cornwell, Simon Greenall Crazy sitcom about 3 priests and their housekeeper who live on Craggy Island, not the peaceful and quiet part of Ireland it seems! Stars: Dermot Morgan, Ardal O'Hanlon, Frank Kelly While telling her husband he's dying, Jill sets her sights on the next door neighbour, Don. And torments his wife, who suffers from MS.

Stars: Julia Davis, Angus Deayton, Rebecca Front Garth Marenghi's Darkplace (TV Series 2004) Comedy This parody series is an unearthed 80s horror/drama, complete with poor production values, awful dialogue and hilarious violence. The series is set in a Hospital in Romford, which is situated over the gates of Hell. Stars: Richard Ayoade, Matt Berry, Matthew Holness Red Dwarf (TV Series 1988) Comedy | Sci-Fi The adventures of the last human alive and his friends, stranded three million years into deep space on the mining ship Red Dwarf. Stars: Chris Barrie, Craig Charles, Danny John-Jules BBC sketch show that while continuing to show the misadventures of a series of popular characters now also introduces a slew of new oddballs and misfits for us to enjoy including Tory Boy and The Lovely Wobbly Randy Old Ladies. Stars: Harry Enfield, Kathy Burke, Paul Whitehouse Friends Tim and Daisy, 20-something North Londoners with uncertain futures, must pretend to be a couple to live in the only apartment they can afford.

Stars: Jessica Hynes, Simon Pegg, Julia Deakin Edit Storyline An interweaving narrative chronicling the antics of such diverse characters as: a transsexual taxi driver, a family obsessed with hygiene and toads, a fiery reverend, a carnival owner who kidnaps women into marriage, and a xenophobic couple who run a local shop for local people. 19 June 2000 (USA) See more » Also Known As: Did You Know? Trivia Papa Lazarou is inspired by a landlord, of the same name, that the writers had when they were sharing a flat, who would frequently phone them up and ask to speak to Steve Pemberton. He would continue saying "Hello, Steve," "Is Steve there?". The League soon changed the name to Dave. See more » Quotes Geoff Tipps : Well, things finally started going my way ladies and gentlemen. In 84 both our mothers got badly sick, mine, thank God, she got better. But yours DIED didn't she Mike? Didn't she? [Mike, in great pain and sorrow nods] Geoff Tipps : Yeah, I won that. At least I won the mums!

See more » Crazy Credits For the Christmas special, Papa Lazarou yells "Merry Christmas" during the credits, and his eyes appear at the very end of the credits. See more » Connections The Most Warped Show Ever Created 17 November 2003 | by phantom-90 (California) – See all my reviews My roommate's English girlfriend gave him a DVD of the League of Gentlemen. Being a huge fan of Monty Python (own the entire series on DVD), Black Adder (likewise), Fawlty Towers (likewise), and The Young Ones (likewise), I was greatly intrigued by the stories I had heard of this series. Then I watched it. Oh my goodness. When I first saw Monty Python, I thought it was bizarre. Then the Young Ones came along and upped the ante. But the denizens of Royston Vasey set the bar so high that I doubt it will ever be topped. Half the time you're watching LOG you're laughing because it's genuinely funny, the other half of the time you're laughing because you can't believe what you've just seen. This series is Stephen King meets the Twilight Zone meets Stanley Kubrick meets Monty Python.

It's easy to be funny, and it's easy to be bizarre and sinister, but to combine them and be all of that at once is truly a feat of genius. So, providing you've got a taste for the dark and strange, settle down on the couch with a nice glass of "aqua vitae" and watch this series. Oh, and don't take your pet turtle to the vet. 55 of 58 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?

Yes Welcome to the real Royston Vasey - You'll never leave | The Independent Media Welcome to the real Royston Vasey - You'll never leave Home of simpletons, sadists, fetishists, xenophobes, thugs, psychopaths, nudists, nosebleeders, kidnappers, toad worshippers, mass-murderers (and other well-adjusted residents of a typical small town in the north of England) by Brian Viner Thursday 17 February 2000 00:00 BST Click to follow The Independent Online The number 397 bus - destination Hyde - rattles along Station Road, Hadfield, followed, from a ramshackle Manchester Evening News hoarding, by the eyes of Harold Shipman. Here, it seems, is conclusive proof that fact is far grislier and more macabre than fiction. But in Hadfield, a north Derbyshire village sprawled across a Pennine valley, fact and fiction have collided with a terrible crash. For Hadfield doubles as Royston Vasey, put firmly on the map by BBC2's The League of Gentlemen, and populated by an extraordinary assortment of weirdos.

The fictional locals are so weird that when a freak show came to town, it quickly scarpered, out-freaked by such characters as Hilary Briss, the apparently cannibalistic butcher. Yet according to some, Royston Vasey is but a pale shadow of Hadfield. The number 397 bus - destination Hyde - rattles along Station Road, Hadfield, followed, from a ramshackle Manchester Evening News hoarding, by the eyes of Harold Shipman. Here, it seems, is conclusive proof that fact is far grislier and more macabre than fiction. But in Hadfield, a north Derbyshire village sprawled across a Pennine valley, fact and fiction have collided with a terrible crash. For Hadfield doubles as Royston Vasey, put firmly on the map by BBC2's The League of Gentlemen, and populated by an extraordinary assortment of weirdos. The fictional locals are so weird that when a freak show came to town, it quickly scarpered, out-freaked by such characters as Hilary Briss, the apparently cannibalistic butcher. Yet according to some, Royston Vasey is but a pale shadow of Hadfield.

"If you put the cast in the street next to the locals, and I'm not ruling myself out, you wouldn't be able to tell them apart," says Barbara Hollingworth, plain-speaking, chain-smoking, twinkle-eyed owner of the village haberdashery. "There was a man outside the post office the other day and his nose turned up all on its own. He didn't need Sellotape. And on the day the TV crew changed the sign above Mettrick the butcher's to H Briss, a woman popped her head round my door and said, 'Barbara, has Mettrick sold 'is shop?' I said, 'No, it's for the filming', and she said, 'Oh.' The next day they'd moved the sign, and the same woman came in and said, 'I see Mettrick's bought 'is shop back.' So, you see, they don't need to write scripts.

They just need to sit in the back of my shop for a morning." William Hall, a clothing salesman visiting Hadfield on business, overhears this, and recalls with a chuckle that he once stopped to ask directions to Hadfield and was advised to continue on the same road for a mile "then 'turn right by the black and white cow', as if the cow was a permanent flipping fixture". Mr Hall lives near Holmfirth, the location, 15 miles away, for the venerable BBC comedy Last of the Summer Wine, and now home to the likes of Summer Wine Taxis, Summer Wine Car Hire, Compo's Cafe, even the Wrinkled Stocking Cafe. The association has been milked beyond reason, Mr Hall believes, and warns Hadfield traders not to make the same mistakes. Of course, the nation is unlikely to embrace Tubbs and Edward, mad porcine proprietors of Royston Vasey's Local Shop, quite as it has Nora Batty. And yet The League of Gentlemen - the second series of which concludes tomorrow - already has a following devoted enough to make the pilgrimage to Royston Vasey.

A coach party from Nottingham University recently descended on the Mason's Arms, which conveniently doubles on the telly as the Mason's Arms ("I think they would have changed the name, but it's on the windows," explains landlady Linda Grogan, happily). And fans have come from as far afield as Holland and Germany in search of the Local Shop, which in fact is a three-sided, purpose-built edifice on remote Marsden Moor. Some shopkeepers grumbled when filming forced them to close for a day or two, but they're not grumbling now. Indeed, Gina Alexander, who runs the sandwich shop, Frank's Place (better known to League of Gentlemen enthusiasts as the fast-food joint Burger Me) has started opening on Sundays to catch the growing tourist trade. Might she actually change the shop's name to Burger Me? William Hall of Holmfirth would recognise it as the start of a descent down a slippery slope. But she has been giving it serious consideration. "I don't know, I might just put it in brackets," she says. "I'm not sure. When you see them spitting on the burgers and bursting spots on them, well, it's not such a good advert, is it?

Actually, the girl who works here on a Saturday morning hadn't seen that particular episode the night before, and she was quite offended when people came in the next day and asked her not to spit on their butties." That was life's imitation of art, but in Hadfield, art also imitates life. An anonymous source assures me that five members of The League of Gentlemen crew "were freaked" when an eccentric local cafÃ© owner told them menacingly that, "I can't do you any food... but I can make you a tuna sandwich." However, to be fair to Hadfield, its quirks are typical of any small community, especially in the north of England. As a small-town northerner myself, I write with authority. And the League of Gentlemen themselves - namely Mark Gatiss, Steve Pemberton, Reece Shearsmith and Jeremy Dyson - are northerners too, from Darlington, Chorley, Hull and Leeds respectively. They revisited their roots to create the characters of Royston Vasey.

Harvey and Val, for instance, who make life a toad-infested hell for their nephew Benjamin, sprang from "that thing of having a difficult stay with relatives, when you're feeling awkward even though they keep telling you to make yourself at home. But we did that joke and it only lasted half a page, so then we added this non sequitur, 'Perhaps you'd like to see Harvey's toads?' and it grew from there." So says Jeremy Dyson, the only member of the quartet who does not appear on screen. I am now safely back in Crouch End, north London, having lunch with the League of Gentlemen. Aged between 30 and 33 they are, most disappointingly, affable, charming and ordinary, related only by the odd dimple or slight mannerism to their gallery of grotesques. With unfailing good humour they fend off suggestions that the second series is not only dark, but in places too dark, pointing out that they have only once been referred to the Broadcasting Standards Council "and we got off".

They have not yet been courted by advertising agencies, they tell me, but given the growing popularity of some of the show's catchphrases - "This is a local shop, for local people, there's nothing for you here" - it seems only a matter of time. There must be some manufacturers brazen enough to be associated with death, torture and kidnapping. "Maybe Benetton," says Dyson. Endearingly, they rattle off a bizarrely eclectic list of the show's celebrity fans, including Sir Paul McCartney, Steve Coogan, Toyah Willcox, Charles Dance, Ronnie Corbett and Sir John Birt - who recently cited it, along with The Human Body and The Cops, as one of the three shows that reflected the breadth of his achievements at the BBC. Better still, they share with me their sources of inspiration. The restart officer Pauline - who damned her charges as "a work-shy set of bastards!" during a workshop on self-esteem for the long-term unemployed - was, apparently, based on a real restart officer. "Wood Green, 1992, and she was called Pauline too," says Shearsmith. "I hear writs flying," says Gatiss.

"You don't honestly think that anyone would admit to being the model for Pauline, do you?" counters Shearsmith. More pertinently, the fact that Shearsmith was engaged on a restart course in 1992 shows how far they have all come in a relatively short time. They met at college, formed a live comedy act and called themselves the League of Gentlemen after the film starring Jack Hawkins - "a kind of genteel Reservoir Dogs," Gatiss explains. There followed a classic case of comedy evolution. Success at the Edinburgh Fringe begat a successful radio series which in turn begat the hit TV series. On radio, the bleak northern town was called Spent. When they moved to telly, having tired of the joke, they renamed it Royston Vasey. Which, rather wonderfully, is the real name of the notoriously ribald stand-up comedian Roy "Chubby" Brown. "We read it somewhere, and thought it sounded like a place," says Pemberton. A "dead chuffed" Chubby Brown duly accepted a cameo role as the mayor (and was spotted proudly having his photograph taken next to the sign that declares "Welcome to Royston Vasey - You'll Never Leave").

So Chubby Brown, not Hadfield, is the real Royston Vasey. Although it is Hadfield, not Chubby Brown, that seems born to it. Originally, though, Hadfield was merely one of several towns and villages being considered. For a while, Todmorden in Lancashire was the hot favourite, especially when the Gentlemen spotted a drunk, who had been standing in the street for hours roaring abuse at passers-by, lurching into the dentist's. "We had visions of him actually being the dentist," says Gatiss, "and going in to find him politely saying 'next please'." Still, anything Todmorden can do, Hadfield can do better. The driver of the Royston Vasey taxi, Barbara, is a butch man with a gruff voice, saving up for a sex-change operation. "And there's a real transsexual in Hadfield," Gatiss adds. "He invited me in for a cup of tea, and told me he lived in Back Bottoms. You couldn't write it, could you?" But, of course, the League of Gentlemen could. And probably will.

The final episode of the second series of 'The League of Gentlemen' is on BBC2, tomorrow, 10pm The League Of Gentlemen: Article IRISH TIMES - MAY 5, 2001 By Brian Boyd ________________________________ This generation's answer to Monty Python, the grotesque comedy team of The League of Gentlemen has gone from being a local to a universal success. During the run of their West End show, Brian Boyd is invited backstage for a guided tour of Royston Vasey and the chance to touch the 'precious things'. Welcome to Royston Vasey. On your right, you'll see the local shop where the incestuous owners inside will kill any customer who isn't from the area. A bit further along you'll see the butcher's shop, where the proprietor will sell you sausages made out of human meat. And look, there's Herr Lipp, the child-molesting German exchange teacher, talking to Barbara, the preoperative transsexual taxi driver. We're not in Ballykissangel now, Toto. Remarkably, the above tour really does take place.

The hardcore fans of the sinister and dark comedy series, The League of Gentlemen, really do travel on a coach to the town of Hadfield in Derbyshire, where the show is filmed. The locals smile patiently as hundreds of addled "Leaguers" (as fans of the show are known) hurtle around their quaint town, shouting out "are you local?" (one of the show's catchphrases) and ringing the local taxi company, asking for Barbara. Tonight, though, the gallery of grotesques who populate Royston Vasey are going about their grim business amid the glimmering lights of London's West End. Tubbs, Edwards, Pauline, The Dentons, Herr Lipp, Barbara, Dr Chinnery and Hillary Briss are all at the Theatre Royal, at the end of a nationwide tour and halfway through a potentially box office-record-breaking West End run. Outside on Drury Lane, people dressed up as characters from the show lend a Rocky Horror Show feel to proceedings, and the surrealism of the situation is copper-fastened by the sight of a bunch of elderly blue-rinse ladies striding into the foyer of the theatre, all wearing "Are You Local?" T-shirts.

At the extensive merchandising stall, I decide to get in the swing of things and purchase a "My Nipples Are Like Bullets" top. We've been here before all right. Some fans used to dress up as characters from Newman and Baddiel for their live shows, while others spouted Father Ted catchphrases ad nauseum, the way they now repeat the League's "don't touch the precious things", "okey cokey, pig-in-apokey", "special stuff" and, most strangely, "would you like to see Harvey's toads?". This time, though, people are paying homage to a show based on comedy routines about incest, paedophilia and cannibalism. But all done in the best possible taste. Potentially as big and as important for this generation as Monthy Python was for a previous one, The League of Gentlemen has grown too big for its cult status and is now marauding its way through the European television networks (Poland and Sweden are massive fans). It is also beginning to make an impact in the US, where the New York Times hailed it as a welcome relief from the mainstream gloss of Friends and Frasier.

It began, like most British comedy acts, at the Edinburgh Festival, the stage show winning a Perrier Award in 1997. It was then incubated on Radio 4 for a year before transferring to BBC2. The first two series picked up an average of five million viewers per episode, as audiences were transfixed by a show that was nominally "comedy" but which traded - and gleefully so - in violence, bullying, pain and despair. More Theatre of the Cruel than sitcom, The League was darkly disturbing and spookily sinister, yet somehow it fascinated. When the dam burst halfway through the first series, the awards just didn't stop coming: A Royal Television Award, a Golden Rose of Montreux, a BAFTA . . . The video of the first series sold more than 100,000 copies, and when The League are on tour, they regularly fill Point Depotsized venues. Come backstage and meet the cast - they won't bite/bugger/bludgeon you to death.

Reece Shearsmith looks like a junior manager in Centra and, during most of the interview, is more interested in examining what lies below his fingernails than in answering questions - but does make a strong finish. Mark Gatiss is blokish-looking, friendly and responsive, odd only in the fact that he collects fossils - and tells you so. Steve Pemberton looks exactly like Herr Lipp - terrifyingly so, in fact. The three perform all the show's 40odd characters. Missing is the fourth member of the troupe, Jeremy Dyson, who writes but doesn't perform. "He just can't act, that's all there is to it. So he confines himself to writing," says Gatiss. All from various parts of northern England (Blackburn, Leeds, places like that), they're quick to dispel contrived ideas of where their material comes from. "We're all Michael Palins," says Gatiss, grinning. "None of us experienced deep and dark trauma in our childhoods and we're all quite normal. People often presume we're a bit psychotic or something because of the nature of our stuff, but the opposite is in fact the case.

We're tired now of being called `The Dark Princes Of Comedy'." They are, they think, the collective sum of their TV-watching youth. "Although we only met up when we were drama students at a college in Wakefield in Yorkshire, we all seemed to have similar upbringings" says Gatiss. "We were always the types who, instead of playing sports at school, would be walking around the pitch talking about films instead. We grew up watching people like Leonard Rossiter, Peter Sellers and Ronnie Barker. "The `dark' stuff in our humour comes from the fact that it makes us laugh - and if we laugh at something, it's in the show. Expecting us to be some sort of ghoulish figures, as the press always do, is just like saying to an artist: `You paint pictures of men with beards, but you're clean-shaven yourself'. It's a bit ridiculous." "It's an odd one though," says Pemberton, "When people approach us and say, `We love your stuff because it's so dark and evil', we always go, `But it's a comedy show'.

And then, when other people say, `We just find your material really funny', we go, `But it's really dark and sinister, isn't it?' So we're ambivalent about the whole thing." Located somewhere between Monty Python and David Lynch, The League of Gentlemen has succeeded where other comedy shows has failed, precisely because it manages to extract humour from areas where it shouldn't properly exist. Like the good drama students that they were, the team have understand that in the local lies the universal. "Anywhere can be local; that's the whole point of Royston Vasey," says Gatiss. "The other point is that we are portraying real people, in some cases quite literally [see panel]. Most everyone in the show is based, originally, on a real person. We didn't want a bunch of outlandish characters being parodies of themselves, just spouting catchphrases." In that case, has the show ever given away enough detail about who provided the basis for the characters for the real-life person in question to take an action? Has this happened? The three look at each other, then chorus, "We can't talk about that".

But Shearsmith does say: "A while back, we went back down to that place near Brighton to see if we could re-find the shopkeeper who Tubbs is based on. We were walking around lost when these people came up to us, who obviously knew the show, and they said, `If you're looking for the local shop, it's just over there', so obviously some people know who Tubbs is based on. We went back into the shop and she treated us the same way she had treated us the first time. No change there." More theatrical revue than stand-up, The League first took to the boards in 1994 with a weekly residency at a small theatre in London's Little Venice before taking the Edinburgh plunge. On their second visit to the festival, they won the Perrier prize (beating Bandon boy Graham Norton), becoming only the second sketch-type act to win the prize. "We come from a totally different tradition to the stand-ups," says Pemberton.

"We do very character-based comedy that just wouldn't work in a comedy club - in fact, we tried doing some of the characters in the clubs, but in the 10 or 15 minutes that we had, it just wasn't possible to get the idea of the character over." Fittingly, the first half of tonight's show is a reprise of their Edinburgh show. The League, all dressed in tuxedos, run through a series of well worked routines that the audience enjoy, but obviously all are here to see Royston Vasey brought to life. When its inhabitants appear in the second half, there are almost rock 'n' roll style cheers for the entrance of Tubbs, Edwards, Herr Lipp and company. A magnificent display sees them throwing in references to Sondheim, Jean Genet and Shakespeare, while still managing to plumb the beautiful depths of an adult-rated horror show. The live show has been extended so many times now that The League worry about how they're going to find the time to write the third television series - after London, the tour comes to Dublin and then goes on to New York.

"With all these performances, it's difficult to meet the sort of people who we can base new characters on," says Pemberton. "It is a worry, and we're really going to have to sit down and work on what we're going to do in the new series. But it's difficult to do a finite amount of touring when you hear the TV series has taken off in places like Israel and Japan." "Apparently loads of Japanese people are turning up in Hadfield," says Shearsmith. "And the bus that brings them there now has Royston Vasey written on it instead of Hadfield. Somebody was telling me the other day that the local butcher in the town was going out of business before the TV show came out, but now he's put a sign in his window saying he sells sausages with `special things', and he's doing a roaring business. How strange is that?" Indeed. Pondering this strangeness, I leave the League of Gentlemen's dressing room, but after a few wrong turns in the cavernous theatre, I find myself in the basement, in a darkened room, seriously lost. I step on a mat and PIL's This Is Not A Love Song starts to play - very eerie.

Fumbling around, I find a light, switch it on and (gasp) come face to face with all the horrific props of the show. I make a run for a fire exit, push open the door and emerge on to the sun-drenched streets of Drury Lane, realising that I've just stared hard into the faces of Royston Vasey - a place where you can check out any time you like, but you can you never leave. A GUIDED TOUR OF THE VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED - Most of the characters in this gallery of grotesques are based on real people. Here, the population of Royston Vasey is unmasked: Tubbs and Edward - The incestuous, serial-murdering owners of the "local shop for local people", who constantly admonish unwelcome visitors not to "touch the precious things", are based on a real-life shopkeeper. "About five years ago, the four of us were down in a place near Brighton," says Reece Shearsmith. "We went into the local shop for a look around and the woman working there had an 'I've got a gun upstairs' look on her face.

She kept staring at us all the time, almost daring us to touch one of her crappy snowstorms. She is Tubbs and Edwards. If you want to go to the actual shop, it's in a small seaside town called Rottingdean". Incidentally, Tubbs and Edwards were worked on in rehearsals for quite a while, but never really clicked until someone came up with the idea of giving them scary looking upturned noses. Barbara - The town's pre-operative transsexual cab driver is based on a real magician. "She would be doing her magic act and halfway through would always stop and start telling the audience about the operation she was about to have," says Shearsmith. "We just turned her into a cab driver." Papa Lazarou - Perhaps the scariest of all the locals, Papa "you're my wife now, Dave" Lazarou, the black-and-white-minstrel ringmaster is based on Shearsmith's and Pemberton's ex-landlord. "He was very odd," says Shearsmith. "He would never speak to me, only to Steve. If the phone rang and I answered it, he would say: 'Hello, Steve.' That became "hello, Dave'.

Major Frank Vaughn - The only character not played by one of the League. It's a bit of an in-joke, in that the Mayor is played by "blue" comedian, Roy "Chubby" Brown, whose real name is Royston Vasey. The Mayor died of a nosebleed in the last series. Hilary Briss - This is the evil butcher who serves up "special things". Not based on a real person, the joke here is that "briss" is the word for the Jewish circumcision ceremony. Yes, I know it's disgusting. Pauline - The fascistic Restart officer, who has an unhealthy obsession with pens, is based, handily enough, on Shearsmith's real-life Restart officer. "She was my officer in Wood Green in 1992. Obviously not every- thing about them is the same, but yes, there is a real-life Pauline out there somewhere." Mickey - The League of gentlemen Web site What is Royston Vasey ... Some say that it doesn't exist...

That it's a fictional north country community invented for The League of Gentlemen, a comedy series first heard on BBC Radio 4 as On The Town with the League of Gentlemenin 1998. That this radio programme won a Sony award for comedy. That it was then reincarnated and expanded as a television series shown on BBC 2 television in the UK in January 1999 and repeated in November 1999. That this television series won the Golden Rose comedy award at the Montreux Television Festival in April 1999. That the programme won the British Academy Television Award for Comedy in May 2000 (and was nominated for Innovation). That a second television series was shot in Hadfield in September/October 1999 and shown on BBC 2 television in the UK in January and February 2000. That a 'Christmas Special' shot in Hadfield in August was shown in the UK in December 2000. That it was filmed mostly on location in Hadfield, a village near Glossop in the High Peak district of Derbyshire, England. Some know better...

If you are planning a visit to Hadfield to see the original locations where The League of Gentlemen was filmed, here's some information you might find useful. The League of Gentlemen - stream online Comedy, Horror Synopsis The League of Gentlemen is a quartet of British dark comedy writers/performers, formed in 1995 by Jeremy Dyson, Mark Gatiss, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith. The television programme for which they are best known, although officially labelled a sitcom, was initially more sketch-based, linked together by their common setting: the fictional village of Royston Vasey, based on the town of Alston, Cumbria and set somewhere in the north of England. The show contains elements of horror. The first series aired on BBC Two in 1999, and follows the lives of dozens of the town's bizarre inhabitants, played by Gatiss, Pemberton and Shearsmith in a number of different guises and make-up. The television series was filmed mainly in Hadfield, but also features Glossop, Gamesley, Marsden, Mottram, Hope Valley, and Todmorden.

The series ended in 2002 although a movie version of the show was released in 2005. Rumours have circulated since 2007 that the show would return for a full length series or special but nothing has ever been confirmed or denied. However, Shearsmith and Pemberton did reunite in 2009 to create a similarly dark BBC sitcom, Psychoville, which featured an episode guest-starring Gatiss. The three reunited again in 2012 to film a series of sketches for the fourth series of CBBC show Horrible Histories. The League of Gentlemen - watch online: stream, buy or rent We try to add new providers constantly but we couldn't find an offer for "The League of Gentlemen" online. Please come back again soon to check if there's something new.

Question: On TV, who are the inhabitants of the village of 'Royston Vasey'?
Answer: 'THE LEAGUE OF GENTLEMEN'